Not a Sound
by Starriecat
Summary: Your eyes slowly close, so quiet a moment anyone could've missed it; they would never have heard us, never even known we were there, that you were dying, you were gone. NejiTen.


Disclaimer: Naruto is still Kishimoto's, even if he **is** apparently sleeping with Sasuke at the moment. -glare-

Warning: Character death :o

A/n: Sorry all you NejiTen fans for my long-term absence! 0'' Started this waay back in September or something, found it on my compy, and finally decided to re-vamp it. I'm not really into this pairing anymore, but I liked this piece, so decided to post it. Enjoy!

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After a while your breathing gets softer, rising like the rate of a heartbeat, coasting up and down between heaven and hell smoothly, soothingly, like life isn't slowly coursing out from your veins with each second, squeezing through those bandages I could never make tight enough no matter how much chakra I packed into them. Never tight enough to stop your bleeding.

Smoothly, smoothly...time isn't passing by at all, is it? Your slow breathing, my hands holding you up against me, in my lap, up from the mud caked on our feet that must be squishing beneath us like worms, but I barely hear a thing. Your breath is the only sound; slow and steady, I'm only able to tell it's even still there from the subtle dip of your chest.

Still so dignified even now; yet you barely struggle to get up from the ground against my back, so limp, so trusting, so calm when you could be doing something.

I blink rapidly, little daydream broken._ So unlike you. _

I look at you again; jaw loose, eyelids shut, feeling void and bloodless as a doll.

You're not struggling anymore.

I grit my teeth, feeling the heat of a glare start to surge against my eyes. Why aren't you fighting?

The blood has been pouring like dozens of miniature oceans declaring disgust with the earth, vomiting in thick red away and leaving grand canyons and gaps for bare land nudity and little people to cross over. Its the worst I've ever seen on you and worse. I feel the muscles of my jaw tighten. So what?

You can't stop now; you just--you can't!

But the blood thickens. Gets deeper. Pools faster, ripping out swifter from your torn flesh. I tighten the bandages again, feeling bone-tired, calling forth energy with all that's left of me I can muster into my vacant, dried-up sacs and veins. Takes almost a minute before they come; I exhale sharply when at least I feel it hit the sac, rushing to accelerate and leave my veins, forcing the surge into the barriers of your skin.

The weak crackle barely starts to seam together your skin and blood and breathing hard as I suck it in, ragged, heavy breaths burning my lungs; make it grow and leak it out into you, feeling the edges of my very cells leave me and course along into your veins, to stop the flow. Panic has made its way in somewhere in the undercurrents of my determination; the concentration that wills everything else to shut the hell up for just five goddamned minutes; but I left the guard down and it got in. Breathe in, swallow; try to focus harder.

Manage to, but by now my efforts, are barely doing a thing.

Blink; look at your face as I feel a chakra surge parallel to mine. Your eyes are faint and barely open, but still unwavering as you watch me. I remember to keep the blaze alive in my eyes; manage a smile, and there's a hint of fierceness in my eyes and your eyes stay open; the faintest hint of a smirk quirks the edge of your dry lips, barely. The fierceness goes full on, burning brighter with the smile.

'_Count on me_.' I insist daringly, and almost begging at the same time; its starving me, it tears it all away from my exhausted, empty insides; tired, tired, tired, and still drain more energy, more and more of it and leaving less and less for me. The stars have been blurring like sparklers in my vision for almost ten minutes now, threatening to pass out; still, I call it forth. _More. __**MORE!**_

Rushing to clot and create, and stop you from going away. We race like Lee against the world, and as we rush I remember why we needed him, for all his green-clad spandex; god, how we need him now. What I would do to have his gentleness, the slightly annoying but definitely necessary support; the smile that would be tired by now but never ever fade, always egg us on faster, until we could no longer stand for just bleeding. The endless source of energy that sometimes exhausted us and other times made us burst with the youth (er, life) he always wanted us to feel as strongly as he did.

Lee; we always took for granted. And still, you stayed with us. Until even you gave out on that hill where the sun's probably still shining, even now, over your frozen body.

(God, I'm sorry. Lee.)

But the flow is faster, and I can't think about those things much longer; in half a minute your bandages are red. We both feel the last spark of our chakra leave our veins towards the clot. Nothing stops it. Your breath tightens; gasp and you swallow, hard. Eyes don't leave the ground, fixated with that glare, veins paler than your eyes, but still fierce and fighting. Again. To the end. I feel my smile return; the fierceness to my eyes.

But you're scared. I'm scared. Still, it--it doesn't seem to matter if you can just--just make it.

When you glance behind at me, everything in those eyes that I've never heard you say; a '_thank you' _and a nothing at all. Its like I've waited for years for those words to come, and now that they have, I find myself wondering if I deserve it.

_'Why have I been waiting for it?'_

This is the only time you'll let me hold you. I decide I like it; caressing the coolness of your hand, but there's no reaction in your eyes. You seem to find staring at the torn bandage unraveled from your arm caught in an endless crack running down into the gravel to who knows where; its out of view and I don't want to see it. I bite my lip and your gaze doesn't move. Tired like you're almost dead and just waiting; just tired, soso tired my heart could break watching you if I let it.

And I let you be. And we let each other. So strange.

But you're almost never tired; even when after I prod you awake after passing out (both of us) on my way from collecting stray kunai after shaking myself from unconsciousness and the annoying allure of sleep; I'm grumpy, forcing myself to move, wondering why and how I woke up before you.

But the second your eyes open I nearly leap back away, sometimes have; I find myself wondering even as I'm stricken with some irrational panic, biting my lip as your translucent pupils move (I've learned to find them, from being frozen by your jungle of a vein-cage; the vines and the concentration behind your stare; its taken me so long to tell what you've been feeling behind it, but I've been getting better; its taken me so long but I'm getting better so why can't you stay?!);

...I wonder the second your eyes open and your pupils move like a predator barely on the emerge from the mist, that second when I jump back in fear and you glare and I laugh nervously, like the unworthy fool I am, what you've waken up to before.

I don't really want to know.

Grip my kunai. Gulp, feeling the sweat run down my sweaty bangs; brush them back, wishing, wondering why I suddenly feel like an amateur who should be scolded--where is my headband?! Seemed unimportant when your eyes were closed, but when you gazed at me...

...Now I find myself wondering these stupid things as you lay in my arms, probably dying, and I can't make myself move or worse, make you move, and you gaze lazily at the mangled bandage ripped away from your tattered mess of bloody flesh and bone, dragged down the jagged asphalt and dirtying dried blood into the unknown core of the earth where I can't see a thing and I don't want to.

Your eyes follow it, half-lidded and only slightly but far too tempted, like the innocent trail down the thread that leads to the snake's eyes. I nearly bite the cords of my lungs, forcing myself to swallow down the blood and words. Let you do what you want (how the hell am I just watching you?!)

You are not following it down. Not. NOT. STOP LOOKING AT IT!!

But the blood still flows inconsiderately faster, and your eyes slowly close; so subtle, so quiet a moment anyone could've missed it in this middle of nowhere where you are gone in my lap; they would never have heard us, never even known we were there, that you were dying, you were gone; in this too white mist that swallows and chokes up everything in its too dense, too veiling (I can't see a thing so please swallow me up), too silent fog.

The moment when your eyes closed, I could've missed it; so silent were your words, the upward glance at me, the brief moment when the coolness of your palm in mine was maybe not so cool, just for a second; then the heat evaporated from the center cracks of your palm. After, no noise was made, the wind still blew. I felt empty in the white mist that covered us and blew past us for miles on end into the empty world; you had ended.

Staring at you. Wondering. Why we never said anything. You may be uncommunicative but not unkind; what used to be cold was now just a tone of voice--your clear, deep, brief tones that never said anything more than you had to, and we hated and loved you for it; but we learned to sense it, the color that was always there, faintly tinted with emotions barely perceptible, still too real to miss (how could anyone call Neji _stoic?_).

I find myself missing you, as you lay in my arms. Couldn't move.

And the white mist moved for miles past us, into the echoing mountains and emptied cities where people I used to love lay somewhere beneath the frozen volcano ash and didn't say a word.

The white mist moved over us, for miles past us, where the world forgot us and never heard our names and died. And there was no sound at all.


End file.
